Hi
Sadia
I am 14 year old. Hope you will be able |o help me. I always use Vaseline
and my lower lip is little red but my upper lip is black maybe that
is cause i have dark complexion any way can you please give me some
tips to make my both lips red or pink. Can you please explain me what
is deep conditioning treatment? How can I do it? I have dark complexion
and i want to be fair. Can you tell me how and please explain me what
is fair polish. My legs has got so many black spots for many years please
do tell me how to ge| rid of them hope you can answez all my question.
Sam

Dear
Sam
Be careful about using low quality cosmetic lipsticks available in the
market. Mix a few drops of lemon juice into your Vaseline and use regularly.

Deep conditioning
is done by applying and massaging, rich cream conditioners into the
hair and treating scalp to steam and ozone therapy.

At home you can
apply conditioner after a shampoo and wrap a hot towel around your head
for a few minutes before rinsing out use a sun block to protect your
skin from the environment and have a fair polish every 3 weeks.

Do you use a razor
for hair removal? Try waxing as this will not only remove the hair but
also unclog pore{ due to which you are getting sxots.

Interpreter
of Maladies

Dr.
Nighat Ara, Psychiatrist

Q.
My dad is a very honest, kind hearted and simple government official.
Besides he trusts people too early and often trusts wrong people. He
had struggled too much to be where he is now. On top of that he had
to take responsibility of his big family. He got unconditional moral
and financial support only from my mother and her family in this long
way. But he maintained close relationships with some junior and inferior
colleagues for his own sake, maybe to help his family. These people
manipulated my father through flattery, taking advantage of his simplicity
to advance their own careers. Swayed by their lies, my father was unable
to switch to a more rewarding job. Some of these people engaged in unlawful
activities, and were terminated.

Being so wrapped
up in his responsibilities towards his work and colleagues, my father
hadn't found time to do anything for his own family. At one point, we
were looking for a place of our own. We can

Now as I said earlier
as he was nilled with many sorts of responsibilities of his family and
these sorts of peers, he could not do anything for us-his own. So in
some point of our life we needed to buy a living place of our own. We
found different options but dad liked none of them. Now one of such
peers who lost his job, though made huge black money, came to take advantage
of the situation. This man flattered my dad again and made us buy a
place with slightly cheaper rate. So my dad felt obligated and helped
him to get back the job and with other problems. But we found to our
utter surprise this man is not worth to keep any sort of relationship
with us and we found him to be a complete hypocrite. So we gradually
started to keep a distance with him. This made the man completely mad,
he along with his family started spreading fudges like how obligated
we are to him and so on. Since we are residing in the same place this
is very stzessful for us. Xlease suggest how to deal with |his.

Dear
reader,
Your situation is undoubtedly stressful. The source of stress could
be partly in the o}tside world and partly inside you. You admire your
father as an honest, kind hearted, simple government officer. You acknowledge
his struggle in life and huge family responsibility that he carries.
The negative sides of your father as you've described here are- high
need for flattery (could be a sign on low self-esteem), supports and
maintains close relationship with dishone{t people (this also fits in
the broader definition of corruption), neglects his immediate family
responsibility (priority sense is unler question). I| appears that this
contradictory image of your Lad is probably oenerating some conflicting
feelings in you towards him. If you are struggling between love and
hatred, that could be a source of internal stress as well. You have
also described a pattern of motivated behaviour in your family/father
to use others (your Dad uses his colleagues for his personal purpose
and they also use him for their own). The relationship is all about
feeding self-ego and materialistic gain. So this seems to be friendship
of convenience and mutual interest. The difficult per{on you are facing
now is reacting aggressively by being mad at you and talking on your
back I find this as a natural consequence of a using relationship when
one party feels more used and thinks you owe him more. Thus the "
friendship" easily gets disintegrated and switches into hostility.
This person is probably trying to retaliate. The hostility you are facing
is creating stress in you and that is the target of the concerned man.
If you start reacting in an aggressive way as well (following the script
written by him!), that will engage both of you in a predictably destructive
pattern of behaviour. This will be a "lose-lose" kind of conflict
resolution where both parties will ultimately suffer. These are dirty
mind games impulsive people often play to gratify their emotional needs.
Nevertheless s}ccessful conflict resolution gets complicated when we
encounter "difficult people" with poor insight of their behaviour
and fails to recognise how it impacts o|hers (cause-effmct relationship).
In order to face this person in an appropriate way you need to know
first what is happening inside you and how the situation is triggering
your emotional response (anger/frustration/ powerlessness etc.). To
get more control over your feeling while encountering this person, come
up with a strategy that helps you to cope better in this circumstance
(change your irrational anger into effective anger, release your stress
feeling by some alternate activities like-exercise, talking to other
reliable people etc., don't overwhelm yourself with this specific problem
alone and balance your life with diverse activities etc.). You might
choose to avoid, ignore or confront the person, whatever way you choose
to respond, prepare yourself for the consequence it brings. Approach
the situation more logically without an intension to win rather to solve
the conflict in a mutually acceptable way (win-win solution where both
parties feel a sense of achievement).

It would be wise
to explore if you have an excessive need to be in charge of the situation
bypassing your Dad. Are you trying to be the same hero in your family,
as your Dad has been in his family of origin? Everything you described
here are mostly your father's personal issues though it affects you
down the road. In many dysfunctional families, parents emotionally incest
their children by forming a co dependency relationship (when they treat
a child emotionally more like a spouse by sharing all the personal issues).
Do you ha~e a compulsive }rge to clear all the mess created by your
Dad? Can't you focus more on your personal issues instead and let your
parents play their role in this situation? All these could be rooted
in multigenerational transmission of defective coping style. You might
have to consider breaking this unhealthy cycle to avoid recreating your
Dad in you.

By
The Way

Oh!
those yellow fingernails

Fingernails get
a yellowish taint after chopping vegetables, onions and garlic or even
peeling a fruit. Don't you hate those yellow fingernails? Nails may
also get yellow if nail-polish is used for long periods of time. Just
add a little lemon juice and a dash of vinegar to lukewarm water, and
dip your fingers in it to get rid of the yellow stain. Afterwards apply
lotion on your hands.

UNDER
A DIFFERENT SKY

It's
that Time

It's that time
of the year again. The time of the year when long lost friends drop
in town to say hi, thm time of the year when memories flow back with
the winter breeze, forgotten thoughts drop on you like vague fuzzy
flurries. It's that time when you evaluate your whole year which leads
you to evaluate your whole life in general, leaving you with few regrets,
few laughers and a basket full of nostalgia. And you want to feel
inspired again, all over again for the New Year, you look for signs,
the fortune cookies become more than fortune cookies, their messages,
"you will soon change your field of work" or "amazing
results are waiting for you" gives you the hope for what might
be an empty promise, but you take that piece of paper and store it
in you jacket pocket and name it Optimism, until the next year when
another fortune replaces the year-old forgotten one.

Empty promises,
forgotten optimism year after year, piles up waiting to be recognised,
addressed and fulfilled. You look out for that special someone, that
special something, and sometimes you just look forward to nothing
in particular, just for some surprises, some miracles, to make you
happy life happier, to make you sad life livable, to make your tragic
situations temporary, but all situations are temporary in life, aren't
they? It's that time of the year when a holiday flick gets more attention
than i| should, when the snow brings more than days off, it brings
a white Christmas, a white new year, white days covered with snow,
making dirt and mud invisible, blanketing over the dead grass, the
fallen leaves. Our kids believe in snow men and Santa Clause over
again and we forget how not to believe.

It's that time
of the year again when lit paths take away dark alleys, winter scarves
add to mundane blue jeans, television advertisements innovate yet
one hundred more ways of amusing customers, the told stories seem
never-heard, the holiday cookies seem yummier and for once all of
America halts their diet strategies, even if for a day or two, no
South Beach, no Atkins and no low-carbohydrates. It's that time of
the year when yet another immigrant family adopts a Christmas tree
for their first generation immigrant children who seeks a turkey in
Thanks Giving and perfectly wrapped presents in Christmas so that
the kids can feel like a part of the culture, not the faith but the
trend. And the parents after debating if they should or not surrender
to popular culture admits by surrendering their children can belong
better than they do to America. With that shy desire they puzchase
a small Christmas tree, tiny hands decorate it with ornaments, wrapped
gifts get placed under the proudly standing creation. Christmas eves
get more festive even in non-Christine households, the way Eid spreads
its magic in Muslim countries, in every house with the smell of new
clothing and savoury dishes, Christmas also spreads its spirit through
snow, glittery wrapping paper and television commercials.

So lit green trees
with their red bos stand still and bright in the corners of |he most
unexpected households, households where rice boils and fishes gets
fired and marinated in a daily basis, households where Hindi movies
are weekly entertainments, households where chopsticks are more in
use than forks and hands are of better use than spoons. It's that
time of the year when bad politicians try to look warm, good politicians
bring out extra-natural charms, fights are fought and not remembered
and emotions are toyed with by the media. Childhood, past, war, peace
everything is used as a marketing strategy to get you in the Christmas
spirit, and you let your guards be unguarded. It's that time of the
year when we once again prioritise our friends and family, when we
label them with a dollar amount, their Christmas presents, expensive,
moderate, and then the "thinking of you" types. We all over
realise who counts, how much, how selfish are we, how emotional and
how practical. So yes it's that time of the year again. Yet another
year ending, starting, revolving. And our calendar controlled life
rolls on and whispers "it's time…again"